In a myriad minor ways, it was to her father that the girl first turned. And Annie was by now resigned to the notion that here history was inexorably repeating. She herself had been her father's child, her mother unwilling or unable to see beyond the pool of golden light encircling Annie's brother. Now Annie, with no such excuse, felt herself propelled by pitiless genes to replicate the pattern with Grace.
The train slowed in a long curve and came to a halt in Hudson and she sat still and looked out toward the restored veranda of the platform, with its cast-iron pillars. There was a man standing exactly where Robert normally waited and he stepped forward and held out his arms to a woman with two small children who had just climbed down from the train. Annie watched him hug each of them in turn, then shepherd them toward the parking lot. The boy insisted on trying to carry the heaviest bag and the man laughed and let him. Annie looked away and was glad when the train started to move out again. In twenty-five minutes she would be in Albany.
They picked up Pilgrim's tracks farther back along the road. There were spots of blood still red in the snow among the hoofprints. It was the hunter who saw them first and he followed them, leading Logan and Koopman down through the trees toward the river.
Harry Logan knew the horse they were looking for, though not as well as the one whose mangled carcass he had just watched them cut from the wreckage of the jackknifed trailer. Gulliver was one of a number of horses he looked after up at Mrs Dyer's place but the Macleans used another local vet instead. Logan had noticed the flashy new Morgan a couple of times in the stable. From the blood it was trailing, he knew it must be badly hurt. He still felt shaken by what he had seen and wished he could have got here earlier to put Gulliver out of his misery. But then he might have had to watch them taking Judith's body away and that would have been tough. She was such a nice kid. It was bad enough seeing the Maclean girl whom he hardly knew.
The rushing noise of the river was getting loud and now he caught sight of it down there through the trees. The hunter had stopped and was waiting for them. Logan stumbled on a dead branch and nearly fell and the hunter looked at him with scarcely veiled contempt. Macho little shit, thought Logan. He had taken an instant dislike to the guy as he did to all hunters. He wished he'd told him to put his goddamn rifle back in the car.
The water was running fast, breaking over rocks and surging around a silver birch that had toppled from the bank. The three men stood looking down at where the tracks disappeared by the water.
'Must have tried crossing over or something,' said Koopman, trying to be helpful. But the hunter shook his head. The opposite bank was steep and there were no tracks going up it.
They walked along the bank, nobody speaking. Then the hunter stopped and put his hand out for them to do the same.
'There,' he said, in a low voice, nodding up ahead.
They were about twenty yards from the old railroad bridge. Logan peered, shielding his eyes against the sun. He couldn't see a thing. Then there was a movement under the bridge and at last Logan saw him. The horse was on the far side, in the shadows, looking right at them. His face was wet and there was a steady dark dripping from his chest into the water. There seemed to be something stuck to his front, just below the base of the neck, though from here Logan couldn't make out what it was. Every so often the horse jerked his head down and to the side and blew out a strand of pink froth that floated quickly away downstream and dissolved. The hunter swung the gun bag off his shoulder and started unzipping it.
'Sorry pal, they're out of season,' Logan said, casual as he could, pushing past. The hunter didn't even look up, just pulled the rifle out, a sleek Winchester .308 with a telescopic sight as fat as a bottle. Koopman looked on admiringly. The hunter took some bullets from a pocket and calmly started loading the rifle.
'Thing's bleedin' to death,' he said.
'Oh yeah?' said Logan. 'You're a vet too, huh?'
The guy gave a scornful little laugh. He went on slotting bullets into the magazine with the infuriating air of someone who knew he would be proven right. Logan wanted to strangle him. He turned back toward the bridge and took a careful step forward. Immediately the horse backed away and now he was in the sunlight on the far side of the bridge and Logan could see there wasn't anything stuck to the animal's chest. It was a flap of pink skin hanging loose from a terrible L-shaped gash, about two feet long. Blood was pulsing out of the exposed flesh and streaming down his breast into the water. Logan could now see that the wetness on the horse's face was blood too. Even from here he could tell the nasal bone had been smashed in.
Logan had a sinking feeling in his stomach. This was one hell of a beautiful horse and he hated the idea of putting him down. But even if he could get near enough to control the bleeding, the damage looked so severe, it was odds on the animal would die. He took another step toward him and Pilgrim backed off again, turning to check out the escape upstream. There was a sharp sound behind him, the hunter racking the bolt of his rifle. Logan turned on him.
'Will you shut the fuck up?'
The hunter didn't respond, just gave Koopman a knowing look. There was a rapport developing here that Logan was keen to break. He put his bag down and squatted to get some things out of it, talking to Koopman now.
'I want to see if I can get to him. Could you loop over to the far side of the bridge there and block him off?'
'Yes sir.'
'Maybe get yourself a branch or something and wave it at him if he looks like heading your way. You might have to get your feet wet.'
'Yes sir.' He was already going back up into the trees. Logan called after him.
'Holler when you're ready. And don't get too close!'
Logan loaded a syringe with sedative and stuffed some other things he thought he might need into the pockets of his parka. He was aware of the hunter's eyes on him but ignored him and stood up. Pilgrim's head was low but he was watching every move they made. They waited, the rush of water loud about them. Then Koopman called and as the horse turned to see, Logan stepped carefully down into the river, concealing the syringe in his hand as best he could.
Here and there among the torrent were slabs of exposed rock, washed clean of snow, and he tried to use them as stepping-stones. Pilgrim turned back and saw him. He was getting agitated now, not knowing which way to run and he pawed the water and snorted out another slick of bloody froth. Logan had run out of stepping-stones and knew the moment had come to get wet. He lowered one foot into the current and felt the icy surge over the top of his boot. It was so cold, it made him gasp.
Koopman appeared in the bend of the river beyond the bridge. He too was up to his knees in the water and he had a big birch branch in his hand. The horse was looking from one of them to the other. Logan could see the fear in the animal's eye and there was something else there too which scared him a little. But he spoke to him in a soft, soothing lilt.
'It's okay fella. It's okay now.'
He was within twenty feet of the horse now and was trying to figure out how he was going to do this. If he could get hold of the bridle, he might have a chance of giving the shot in the neck. In case something went wrong, he had loaded more sedative into the syringe than he would need. If he could get it into a vein in the neck, he would have to inject less than if he shot into a muscle. In either case, he would have to take care not to give too much. A horse in as bad a state as this couldn't be allowed to fall unconscious. He would have to try and inject just enough to calm him so they could lead him out of the river and get him somewhere safer.